Let me just tell you one thing first. This is easier said than done.

There is a great post at Life Clever about flipping your thoughts, but I believe before you can flip your thoughts you first need to be aware of your thoughts. You need to be able to interrupt yourself when you’re experiencing negative thoughts and feelings, and this can be tricky. You might find yourself keeping up with this for a few days, but then you get stuck into something that frustrates or annoys you, or gets you experience some sort of negative thought that you forget to interrupt and flip.

In a presentation I once saw or heard by Tony Robbins, he speaks of undertaking a 1 week trial of positive thoughts. The idea is to only think positive thoughts for one week. This doesn’t mean though that you don’t think anything bad, but as soon a negative thought pops into your head, you immediately interrupt yourself and flip your thought into something positive. And, like I said, this can be challenging, as it means you need to be constantly aware of your thoughts and feelings.

I don’t have problems flipping my thoughts, but I definitely struggle at catching myself when I am in a negative state.

I’m currently on day 6 of the Simpleology 101 course, but I decided to read ahead a little in the virtuosity book.
Simpleology, teaches essentially the same rules that most, if not all, personal/business development experts are trying to teach us. Simple rules to be successful like selecting clear goals, focusing your attention and energy on your goals and taking action, and although we might have heard this time and again from all over the place and think we already know this. Something I heard from Tony Robbins rings true here, “if you are not doing it, you don’t know it”, and that’s the great thing about the simpleology course it makes it laughably easy to stick to the course and take regular, daily, effective action.

Anyhow, back to the point. I was reading ahead and something struck me on the truth about procrastination. Something simple, but true nevertheless.
“There is no such thing as procrastination or laziness”, because there is no such thing as inaction. You can’t not do anything. Even if you are sitting on your butt, watching TV, you’re doing something. There is a whole bunch of stuff happening to your body and mind, whether you’re sitting on the couch, exercising, driving, or even sleeping. They’re all actions. The only thing that exists is ineffective action masquerading as inaction.

This was an aha moment for me, not because i didn’t know that procrastination was taking ineffective action that distracted my attention from my goals, but the fact that no matter what you are doing, even if you think you are not doing anything, you are taking action. It gave me a new perspective, that made me feel more empowered.

I realized every moment is a choice. Since in order to take action you need to make a choice, a decision, and since there is no such thing as inaction, it leads that every moment of every day of your life is a choice, and that’s empowering.